Musings

…formerly fat people need to eat less than never-fat people to maintain exactly the same weight. In other words, a 150-pound woman who has always weighed 150 might be able to get away with eating, say, 2,500 calories a day, but a 150-pound woman who once weighed more—20 pounds more, 200 pounds more, the exact amount doesn’t matter—would have to consume about 15 percent fewer calories to keep from regaining the weight.

But, why? I know this NYT article was posted last week, but the idea/notion/fact that your digestive flora makes a difference in the efficiency at which your body absorbs nutrients, including straight-out calories, is worthy of mention. Consider it hereby mentioned. Now I’m waiting for “efficient�? microflora like Bacteroidetes to be available over the counter…. (Or Firmicutes, if that’s the direction you need to go—and some people do!)

I’m reminded of how long it took ecologists who modeled the life cycle of a forest, for example, to include soil microbes. Big error, there!

I mean—we’re considering a complex interaction between food and nutrients put in the mouth, and what happens after. Part of it is called infectobesity—the role of infection—yes, infection affects digestive efficiency.